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imagine you are in your car, at a restaurant or a store and a song comes on that you really like but you don’t know the artist or song title (you make an educated guess with what sounds like the chorus, but certain songs/artists might use this as the title/might be hard to understand what they are saying...

for the last 30 years i have been using a computer and the one common thread among all those computers? applications that made it useful. many of these applications were “off the shelf” meaning i or someone i lived with paid for the application. but an important part – especially of...

with software there is a leader (or creator) and then there are alternatives. sometimes these alternatives improve upon an original, sometimes they simplify a program that has become large and occasionally they consolidate multiple programs or features into one installation. probably my favorite...

if i think back to some of the first apps i’ve used in windows (besides paint which should appear on this list somewhere), winzip has to be among them. in early versions of windows, this wasn’t even an option. in later versions, winzip still provided additional features (like passwords, self...

foxit software has one of my must have installations after the many installs and upgrades i've done of windows 7 over the past year. i typically have occasional need to open a pdf file, and foxit reader does that job well, but what i really like is the ifilter for searching for the correct pdf to open...

thinking back to applications i’ve used for a long time, snagit comes to mind. screen shots for a techie are very important and snagit was my first. since snagit there have been virtualization programs that even let me capture screen shots of a computer booting and utilities in the operating...

games on the xbox have always been “apps” that i use, but this christmas kinect games like joyride, dance central and even the included kinect adventures have provided hours of entertainment for family and friends. the controller free play was really cool and even how it works with zune video amazed...

mark russinovich and bryce cogswell published desktops v1.0 just over a year ago. i recently tested it on a non production windows 7 computer (my trusty netbook) and it worked well with a couple interesting exceptions: 1) the virtual desktops didn’t have the full aero effects (thumbnails were previewed...

i guess there was room for it after all – microsoft paint has always been an application i come back to for one reason of another. on touch screen/tablet computers, it allows you to write your name as well as draw pictures. it’s always allowed me to capture screen shots (using print screen...

windows 7 must have utility #1: it’s thursday and i’ve decided to combine my windows 7 and office 2010 tip into must have utility suggestions. so here they are – for windows 7 (and even previous versions of the operating system) an iso mounting utility. windows 7 includes built in iso burning...

no list of applications would be complete without microsoft office. i have always used this on windows and had a chance to check out office 2004, 2008 and 2011 on the mac. the latest versions of office (2010 for the pc and windows phone, 2011 for the mac and the web versions of office from...

i’ve been using an eye-fi sd card in a digital camera for over a year now (so why is this on a list of the 25 apps for christmas?) – i actually switched to a newer digital camera and still love the fact that the pictures wirelessly transmit to the eye-fi service and down to my computer using the eye...

it’s december 1st and having recently gotten a windows phone 7 and starting to play around with applications, i’ve decided blog posts of my 25 favorite apps would be a good series for my blog. i’ve been using microsoft applications since ms dos 2.0 and microsoft flight simulator 2.0...

remember real player ? winamp ? codec’s like xvid and divx ? there are addins like adobe flash and quicktime to work with certain video formats on webpages. occasionally i’ve had to go find a video codec or install one of these programs based upon content that i’ve got, but the...